CATHOLICISM'S TEACHING THAT PEOPLE SUFFER WILLINGLY IN HELL ENCOURAGES THE VICE OF INDIFFERENCE

 

Many Christians admit that they see some sins or crimes as inconceivably horrible and so worthy of damnation that inside they just curse and wish evil on the people that commit them.  They argue that this is God's gospel written on the heart telling them that everlasting and merciless banishment from the presence of God and his angels and saints is the only appropriate thing.  You can be sure that with people like that there are many people they don't care about and if they end up in Hell.

 

Christianity and Islam teach that at death, if we are estranged from God by sin, we will go to Hell to suffer forever and once we go there it is impossible for us to leave.  Catholics call such sin mortal sin.

 

The Roman Catholic Church says that if you go to Heaven, your mother or wife or child will not be your mother or wife or child any more so if they are in Hell forever you will not be upset.

 

We might not care about people starving to death in the Third World. This is not malicious unless we hear about them and refuse to care. In Catholicism, you hear of the people suffering in Hell and you refuse to care.

 

Or you refuse to try to care. The Church says this is not hatred but indifference.

 

We can think of people in the Third World and if we don’t that speaks of some kind of badness in us. It speaks of our desire to put our happiness before thinking of helping them. That is bad enough but to know or think we know that people are suffering in Hell makes us monsters.

 

Most people would not see us as vicious for forgetting the suffering in the Third World but they would if we saw it and admitted, “Oh we don’t care!” So honesty is a crime in their eyes!

 

It is better to hate than to not care for hate is distorted love. Indifference is the opposite of love. But indifference is an act of hatred and malice when you deliberately embrace it.

 

In Heaven, the saints become indifferent to the damned because the damned suffer (supposedly) of their own free will. The saints are indifferent to the damned because they refuse to be upset by their suffering. They selfishly put their own happiness before compassion and pity. Thus they demean the dignity of the damned.

 

The saints do not believe that compassion for the damned is good. Is this because it is not going to help the damned? We all believe that compassion is good even when directed towards a person who cannot be helped. Compassion is about us wanting to help and wishing to see somebody happy though we cannot help them. So the saints are simply evil.

 

It takes a good person to be compassionate towards somebody that can be helped. But it takes a better one to be compassionate towards somebody that cannot be helped or who does not want to be helped. Why? It shows that your compassion is about people and not results.

 

Catholics need to be even more upset about the saints not caring about the damned sinning. Sin is supposed to be worse than suffering according to Catholic doctrine.

 

Some might claim that the saints have no choice but to put themselves first and refuse to care. They say it is necessary and unavoidable because the saints need to be happy in Heaven. If they have no choice then does that mean their putting themselves first is unselfish? Is an action done for yourself that hurts others unselfish when you can’t do anything else? It would have to be counted as unselfish. It would have to deserve a reward. It is not your fault you had to do it. Your doing what you had to do has to be honoured and praised. The alternatives, meaning doing nothing or even punishing, would be vindictive.

 

If Heaven is about being the maximally good person you can be then these people whether forced to be indifferent or not are not saints. They are not great role models. We need people who care about everybody.
A God who makes saints uncaring so that they might be happy is a God of hedonism. Incredibly, Christians say that those who think suffering proves there is no loving God are guilty of assuming God is only concerned about making us happy. They criticise that. And yet their Heaven gives us exactly that kind of God!

 

The teaching about indifference in Heaven implies that the Church cannot expect to be taken seriously when it condemns hate for it approves of what is worse than hate. Unbelievers cannot be expected to believe Catholics who say they love sinners and hate sins.

 

Catholics say that the souls in Hell are there entirely though their own fault. They teach that if you are guilty of mortal sin now and if you die it is your own fault that you will enter a state of loneliness and lovelessness and tormenting selfishness forever. The Catholics say they love sinners who are fit to go to Hell should they die. It is impossible to believe that when they won’t love them if they die and they are able to know they are in Hell. But suppose they do love the living sinners playing on the edge of Hell. Then why does the Catholic love such a sinner? The only reason is so that the sinner may repent and turn from the course that will put him or her in Hell forever. (They only care about the repentance and not the persons). If they love the sinner for her or his own sake, that contradicts the Catholic claim that if a person freely chooses Hell we should not care about them for they suffer through their own choice. If you should be indifferent towards dead sinners why not living ones? The person who sins is ready for Hell and therefore vile and unloveable and you should be indifferent.

The Church says that those who go to Heaven and who see people including their former friends suffering forever in Hell are indifferent to their agony and loneliness. They are not upset by this for earthly relationships have passed away. (Jesus said that there is no marriage in the afterlife which supports this attitude.) They love God now. They value him and not people. Even if they enjoy the friendship of saints in Heaven, they value them for God and not for themselves. This is proven by the fact that if the saints went to Hell or had been in Hell and never become saints they would not care about them. It is Heaven they really want, they want the pleasure and happiness that comes in Heaven. Thus the doctrine of Hell makes Christians mercenary. Even when they seem to be sacrificing greatly and praying a lot, they have their eye on Heaven. So they are not sacrificing at all.

 

Who would want to believe in Jesus and the Church when doctrines like that are part of the package? No consent to baptism or confirmation can be considered valid for it is made by people who are not making an informed decision. The consent is as invalid as that of a woman who marries a man who is pure evil but pretending to be Mr Perfect.

 

The teaching of Heavenly indifference in relation to Hell implies that if we do good for others the motive should be solely to please God. If we want to please them, we are not living like people ready to go to Heaven who are going to be indifferent to those people if they are in Hell forever. It is as if your earthly life is forgotten in Heaven.

 

Belief in things that are true should be allowed to develop naturally and the person's right to believe differently should be respected.  But God supposedly COMMANDS you to believe in Hell.  He just asks for belief in it but does not command you to believe the damned are there freely and won't leave or does not command you to believe it is not as terrible as traditionally depicted.  Belief in Hell is based on disrespect for yourself and others.   So don't pretend you care about those in Hell.

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